


You wouldn't believe the dream I just had about you and me

by beans_on_toast



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Temporary Character Death, Fluff, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova are in Love, M/M, Mention of Blood and Gore, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, but nothing explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26407330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beans_on_toast/pseuds/beans_on_toast
Summary: 'He knew how it worked. That when your soulmate laughed, you would hear it that night in your dreams. His father, Ibrahim, had spoken of the joy he had, growing up and hearing his mother’s light laugh every night. How happy he’d been, knowing his future partner was so carefree and easy to laugh. How he’d felt his heart would explode when he’d heard that laugh, outloud, that fateful day in the market. How it had speared him through his heart. And Yusuf had sighed at the romanticism of it.'(Soulmate AU where you hear your soulmate's laugh in your dreams)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 136
Kudos: 870





	1. he's all and he's more

**Author's Note:**

> The other night, during a 3 am feed, I saw [post](https://omgjasminesimone.tumblr.com/post/628886824616591360/hopefully-new-soulmate-au-scenarios-1) about soulmate prompts.
> 
> 20\. They recognize their soulmate because they’ve heard their laughter in their dreams.
> 
> And today, those immortal husbands wouldn’t let me leave it be. 
> 
> Title from Some Nights by Fun.
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr](https://hyper-fixate.tumblr.com/) if you want

Yusuf remembered when his older brother, Hamza, had gotten married to a shy dress maker from the village over. She looked beautiful. She had hand stitched a beautiful pattern across the skirt of her simple tunic, with looping branches and leaves. A tree, the joining of two families to make one. Yusuf had been intrigued by it, choosing to sit by his new sister’s knee and gently traced his fingers along it. Something in the soft blue-green thread intrigued him. He knew he would sketch it in the hearth this evening, as he lay watching the fire dwindle to embers. His mother tried to shoo him away, admonishing him for touching the precious dress with his sticky fingers but Karima gently placed her hand on the nape of his neck and smiled at him beneath her veil.

‘Are you happy to be married to my brother?’ Yusuf asked breathlessly. Only seven, but already his mind was filled with the glory of love. The romance he still saw in his parents eyes as they brushed gentle fingers against each other’s cheeks and arms. He knew his parent’s love story and it warmed him to know that they were blessed with so many long, happy years together. He fell asleep with the same fervent prayer on his lips: _let me have a soulmate too._

‘Yes, little brother.’ Karima glanced at Hamza in a way that was so tender and loving, Yusuf blushed as though he had intruded on something intimate. ‘From the moment I heard his laugh, it was as if a great weight was lifted from me.’ 

‘Then I heard hers, and she snorts. Like a boar.’ Hamza had come over to them, grasping one of Karima’s hands in his and drawing it to his lips. She swatted at him with her free hand, but she did laugh. And it did end in a small snort, a joyous noise that seemed to escape her against her will. 

‘How did you know, then,’ Yusuf considered his words carefully, ‘that it was dreams of your soulmate and not a boar?’

That drew a great laugh from Hamza. He laughed with his whole body, throwing his head back and even Karima giggled lightly.

‘Little brother, your mind is a treasure.’ Hamza gently ran his thumb over Karima’s knuckles and they exchanged _that_ look again. ‘I must continue to check on our guests? Do you need anything?’

‘No, our little brother is taking good care of me.’ Karima said and Yusuf felt the tops of his ears heat at the easy nature in which she accepted him. Hamza kissed her hand again and, with a whispered endearment, left them. Karima looked down into Yusuf’s shining eyes. 

‘Do you wish to know a secret?’ She looked at him conspiratorially, and he nodded. ‘You must not say anything.’ Yusuf held his finger over his lips, to mime his silence. ‘But a part of me was so glad that my soul was bound to one so handsome and I was instantly ashamed. To be gifted a soulmate so close and so easy to find and to be concerned with his looks?’ She sighed, leaning back into her chair. ‘But what has been the greatest blessing is getting to hear your brother’s laugh at all hours of the day, not just in my dreams.’ 

She had a hazy smile on her lips, one Yusuf knew well from watching his parents. He had tried to capture that smile in drawings. Tried to imagine it on his own face when he caught his reflection in still water. To imagine the contentment of knowing you had found the other half of your soul, that you were finally on the path you had been destined to tread. He swallowed painfully.

For Yusuf had a secret. A dark, terrible secret, that felt so heavy in his young heart.

Yusuf was not certain he _had_ a soulmate. 

He knew how it worked. That when your soulmate laughed, you would hear it that night in your dreams. His father, Ibrahim, had spoken of the joy he had, growing up and hearing his mother’s light laugh every night. How happy he’d been, knowing his future partner was so carefree and easy to laugh. How he’d felt his heart would explode when he’d heard that laugh, outloud, that fateful day in the market. How it had speared him through his heart. And Yusuf had sighed at the romanticism of it.

But Yusuf didn’t hear laughter in his dreams. Not really. Sometimes he thought he heard small huffs, little sighs of sound. But never laughter. Not the type that seemed to ring in his family home at all times of the day. When Ibrahim caught Mariam in his arms and swung her. When Hamza told stories of the men at the docks, trying to haggle for the wares. When Karima brought him sweets from the market.

When Hamza and Karima announced that there would be even more laughter to look forward to, their intertwined hands splayed over her flat stomach.

He was nearly thirteen when Yusuf woke suddenly, spilling the papers he had been sketching on before he’d fallen asleep. He couldn’t remember falling asleep, but he knew what had woken him. A deep noise that sounded warm and joyful, but still so restrained. As he chased the dream, the noise seemed to slip through his memory and he couldn’t hold it. But a small giggle bubbled from his own lips.

It had been a laugh. 

He had a soulmate.

A more painful thought occurred to him, then. His soulmate had had so very little opportunity to laugh that it had taken nearly thirteen years to hear it properly. He did not think discovering he had a soulmate would have made his heart heavier. But the ache in his chest when he realised that there was someone out there for him, but that this person did not have the joy Yusuf had? That cut him deeply. He scrambled out of bed and folded his body into the familiar shape of prayer. He swore, as solemnly as he could, to bring such joy to his partner that he would know that dreamy contentment Karima had shared with him all those years ago, on her wedding day. _I will hear your laugh at all hours of the day, to make up for years worth of missed dreams._

Yusuf, like any good romantic, was also predisposed to fits of melancholy. He was not sure what he had done to upset Allah. He had had a good childhood, his silent existential crisis about not having a soulmate not withstanding. He had enjoyed his work with his father and brother, travelling by land and sea to trade their goods. Some part of him kept his feet moving. He seemed to know, deep down, that his quiet, solemn soulmate would not be found in the next village over. So he had travelled happily, easily charming those he met with a sharp wit and an easy wink. At every new market, new town, new inn, he wondered if this would be the moment he heard it. Heard the laugh that would begin his life anew.

Then that damned Frankish pope had called his holy war and everything had changed.

There was no laughter anywhere, not anymore. Not when Yusuf’s days were spent trudging through endless sands with this damned man. He’s not sure what made him offer his hand in peace after the last time they woke up. Honestly, it was more fatigue than any sort of mercy. He was covered in sand, his own blood, the Frank’s ( _Nicolo_ , his mind unhelpfully supplied) blood. There was bone and gore in his hair, caked under his nails and in his _mouth_. Surely anything would be better than this. Even walking with his once enemy who was trapped in this living hell with him.

It took many weeks for them to realise they shared a common language. It took them months to accept that whatever curse they both suffered had held and that perhaps, they should stop trying to kill one another and at least be civil. 

Nicolo’s Greek was slow and halting, half remembered from when he was a boy and before he had been promised to the church. Yusuf’s years of travelling made languages easier for him and between Greek and exaggerated hand movements, he had begun to pick up bits and pieces of Nicolo’s mother tongue. Nicolo still tripped over Arabic hopelessly, but was a dedicated student. He asked constantly for the names of things and spent hours repeating them to himself, to try and imprint them on his tongue.

Yusuf watched his hopeless companion and decided that perhaps he had not angered Allah that badly. Though their meeting had been so violent, he had seen a kindness under the layers of doctrine and faith, an eagerness to learn and experience this new world. Nicolo was distractedly oiling his long sword whilst clumsily rolling the strange Arabic consonants and vowels around his tongue. He mispronounced every word.

His companion was amusing if nothing else. And a fairly good cook. 

_And that’s why you don’t tempt fate._ Yusuf thought a moment later, as his musings were cut short by the sharp pain in his neck and he barely had time to see Nicolo jump to his feet as his world tilted sideways and went dark.

Yusuf awoke with a violent gasp. He sat up, his hands scrambling to his neck. His fingers found nothing but tacky blood. Nicolo was watching him, his eyes oddly bright in the dying light.

‘What happened?’ Yusuf asked, his voice rasping. He put his hands on his thighs, trying to ground himself. Nicolo moved back slowly, sitting down in front of Yusuf.

‘Bandits.’ Nicolo jutted his chin towards his right. Yusuf saw two bodies laying in pools of dark blood. ‘They shot you with an arrow.’ A small movement out of the corner of his eye drew Yusuf’s gaze back to Nicolo. He was holding an arrow bolt in his hand. ‘You did not wake up.’ Nicolo said, swallowing hard. ‘Not until I pulled out the arrow. I had thought-’ There was a half strangled sound from the Genoan. ‘I was wondering if your stubborn refusal to die was just at my hand.’ Nicolo said it so quietly, Yusuf’s tired brain took a moment to make sense of it.

It was easier to understand Nicolo’s tone in zeneize, his mother tongue. But Yusuf could hear fear in this man’s voice in any language. Anger and fear had been their first shared language, after all. Yusuf tore his eyes from the arrow, the arrow Nicolo had to tear from his neck, and back at his companion and saw the other man’s tunic was covered in blood. 

‘Are you well?’ Yusuf reached out, his hand poised in the air between him. Nicolo didn’t move away, but stared at Yusuf’s hand as one would a snake about to strike. ‘Did they hurt you?’ Yusuf tried to make the return of his hand seem casual and not stilted, but the tension still hung in the air.

‘This is mostly yours.’ Nicolo said, waving to his chest. ‘It sprouted out of you like a fountain when I pulled this out.’ He rubbed a hand across his cheek, smearing more blood. He grimaced when his hands came away tacky. ‘How bad is it?’ 

_‘For you? It’s an improvement.’_ Yusuf said in perfect zeneize and in such a deadpan manner that it startled a laugh out of his companion.

Yusuf froze. 

For a full moment, he wondered distantly if his heart had actually stopped and he was in the liminal space between their deaths and their gasping rebirth.

Nicolo laughed. Nicolo _laughed._

And Yusuf knew that laugh.

He moved almost as a blur, reaching for Nicolo before the other man could react. Yusuf’s hands caught Nicolo’s face and the force of his movement knocked the paler man back, wedged uncomfortably, half on his knees and half on his pack. Nicolo squawked indignantly, trying to move away, his hands searching for a weapon on instinct. But it was too far away and the manner in which Yusuf had pinned him made it impossible to lever himself off his feet. Yusuf shushed him, softly, gently. Trying to convey that he meant no harm as one hand slid Nicolo’s hair away from his face and Yusuf searched those damned beautiful eyes for something. 

‘What are you doing?’ Nicolo, extremely confused and uncomfortable, stumbled out in slightly mispronounced Arabic, following it with a small huff at the manic look on Yusuf’s face. And it speared Yusuf right through the heart.

He knew that sound too. And his heart flew and broke and started thumping in his chest as if it wished to escape his flesh. Something had to escape, so Yusuf threw his head back and laughed. Nicolo went still under him, his eyes blown wide.

 _‘Mio Dio.’_ Nicolo gasped under him and Yusuf couldn’t help himself. 

He laughed again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘And I kept my promise, I have tried every day to make him laugh. If only I’d known as a boy, so unsure of my dreams, how those small noises of joy would make my heart soar. How drawing a full bodied laugh from this quiet, thoughtful priest would make my blood boil in a very different way then when we met-’ Joe says
> 
> ‘Yes, yes. We get it. You’re still disgustingly sweet.’ Andy sits down, her hands curled around a vodka bottle and offers it to Nile. Nile shakes her head. Andy takes a swig straight from the top.
> 
> ‘Wait, so you didn’t laugh around each other for _months_?’ Nile looks slightly dazed. 
> 
> Nicky shrugs. ‘We were too busy trying to kill each other.’
> 
> Joe laughs.


	2. the love of my life was of the people i'd been taught to hate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely sure how this chapter happened. It wasn't meant to happen, I had no plans for it to happen, but here we all are. I ended up writing till 1 AM the other night, woke up, hated everything and ended up having to rewrite this. Then had an on going fight with myself to take out the lines that yes, objectively, were really awesome sounding but did not belong _here_! And now I've got about 3000 words of meta that I gotta come up with _another_ soulmate AU to write about, I guess?
> 
> I've not really seen a lot of names for Nicky's family, so I looked at some medieval Italian censuses. There were some _amazing_ names. 
> 
> A week ago, my husband jokingly told me to write my own fanfic if I'd read everything else and I brushed it off. But I'm so glad these two burrowed into my brain because this fandom has been so welcoming and so lovely. Every person who reads, likes, reblogs or leaves kudos has made me smile ALL WEEK. And special thanks to ever single person who took the time to leave comments. I am honestly so overjoyed that anyone wants to listen to me wax on about these two adorable nerds.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

One of his earliest memories of the dreams were not of the dreams themselves, but rather of the talk about them with his sister, Anthonia. He could not have been much older than four. But he remembered waking to the first of the sun’s rays and he felt such a lightness in his chest. When Anthonia came to get him from his bed, he nearly felt as though he was floating.

‘You are excitable today, dear Nico.’ She smoothed down his tousled hair and pressed a kiss to his crown. He had always been a quiet, solemn child and she found the change in him that morning endearing.

‘My dreams were laughing at me Thea.’ He grinned and dutifully held his arms over his head for her to remove his nightshirt. He didn’t catch her biting her lip or glancing towards the door as she tugged it over her head. ‘And such a laugh! So big.’ He held his hands out to mime a pot belly. ‘Like when Father Manuel laughs.’ He went to show her, breathing in deeply, but she placed a hand over his lips to still him.

‘Nico. My dear. This is wonderful. This is something very special.’ She lowered her voice, with another glance at the door. ‘But we do not speak of our dreams.’

‘Why?’ He asked, with all the wide eyed innocence a child could muster.

‘Because the laugh, it belongs to the love of your life. The person who will fill the other half of your soul.’ She touched his hair again, her eyes going wistful. ‘One day, you will hear it from another’s lips and it will be as if all of God’s graces have come at once.’’

‘That sounds wonderful Thea.’ He looked at her so wide eyed. With eyes so like her mother’s. Anthonia sometimes imagined she heard the ghost of Mama’s laughter, and Papa’s too she supposes, when Nicolo turned those eyes to her. Nicolo could not hear it, but one cannot listen for a sound they never got to hear.

‘Yes, my dear one. It is.’ She cupped his face in her hands and rubbed her nose against his. ‘And I am glad it brings you such joy. But here, now, it is not to be discussed. Not in this house, do you understand? Rafael and the twins know this too. We do not talk about the dreams. Especially not to father. Not ever.’ Nicolo nodded, but he didn’t understand. Not really. Not yet.

'The person who laughs is to make us happy?' He asked and she nodded. 'Then why?'

'Sometimes this world can be a harsh and unjust place, Nicolo.’ Her hand strayed to a chain on her neck; the locket that held a plait of their mother's hair. ‘It's by God's grace we have our happiness but others may not. And it may be a kindness to them, to keep our happiness here.' She gently placed her palm on his heart. 'There is so much in this world that is beyond our knowing Nico, so much that is for God alone. But we can choose what we do. And we should always choose to be kind.'

So Nicolo kept his secret. A bright, wondrous secret, that felt so warm in his young heart. And every night he heard the laughter in his dreams and awoke with a smile on his lips.

Nicolo was only six when he began to understand God's plans did not always match his own. It could be argued the unfortunate coupling of Nicolo's birth and his mother's death was a clear sign God and Nicolo's plans had never properly aligned, but that blasphemous thought did not occur to him until later. Anthonia came rushing home from the beach, her cheeks ruddy and wind chapped. She brimmed with so much energy he felt dazed by the proximity. He felt the warmth in her smile and in her eyes and it hit him as a dizzying blow. His father’s house, like its master, still mourned and this joy felt so out of place here.

She had met a man, Giacomo, and she had made him laugh.

They married in the spring and Anthonia was beautiful, like an angel from scripture. She took Nicolo’s face in her hands and bent down to rub her nose against his. There were glittering tears in her eyes but they did not spill, even as Nicolo’s were rushing down his cheeks. She kissed him goodbye. She promised to return, but he knew that it would never be the same.

Nicolo did not have the heart for much laughter then.

It was Nicolo’s tenth birthday when divine intervention plagued him once again. Anthonia had promised to come, with his nieces, and Nicolo could barely contain his glee. A strange energy seemed to fill the house and everyone felt it. The twins, always a handful, felt whipped into mania and decided to steal the cake from the cook. With great whoops and hollers, they raced through the halls, tossing it between them. Nicolo ran deliriously alongside. As the twins turned a corner, they decided to include Nicolo in the fun. Shrieking, he dove blindly for his prize.

Only to run directly into their father, Offredo, and priest, Father Manuel. Nicolo ended up on the floor. The cake ended up in Manuel's hair and Offredo’s coat.

Nicolo could not help himself. He _laughed_. A loud noise that almost seemed to crack the very air in the house.

The two cake-covered men shared a look that instantly cut the laugh from Nicolo’s lungs. Within two months, Offredo di Genova oversaw his youngest child take his vows.

Nicolo found even less reasons for laughter then.

He answered Pope Urban II’s call to retake the Holy Land because he felt called to do God’s will. This, he reasoned, was where he and God could agree. Which would finally, _hopefully_ , be enough to earn his rightful place in the kingdom of heaven. Nicolo never considered that heaven might spit him back out.

When he awoke after his first death, clutching at his stomach, pulling apart his tunic to check for the gaping wound he can reflexively still feel, the one stupidly clear thought he managed to knock together was this: _Must I always be born from death?_

And then a rather familiar, bloodied blade cut into his vision and everything went dark again.

God, it turned out, didn’t even have the decency to send Nicolo back alone. He spat back out his enemy as well. Nicolo, in his admittedly limited earthly experience, had looked at the events before him and assumed the two events to be linked. So Nicolo killed the Muslim again. And again. And again. Until, woozy from the stench of their combined blood, he looked up to an outstretched hand instead of a blade and, without really understanding why, he took it.

Learning Yusuf spoke Greek was a pleasant surprise, though, admittedly, Nicolo had not used it for many years. The speed at which Yusuf picked up zeneize was also a pleasant enough happenstance, and Nicolo told himself he was not in any way jealous. But the language that Yusuf spoke refused to lie still on Nicolo’s tongue. It slipped and flowed like poetry out of Yusuf’s mouth and seemed to tumble out of Nicolo’s, heavy as mud.

But then everything about his companion was poetic, his mind unhelpfully supplied in the long march through the desert. The darker man’s movements with his sword or on a horse were always measured. The soft words that he whispered as he prayed five times a day soothed something in Nicolo’s worried soul. The easy way Yusuf made friends in the villages they passed. The endless patience in which he repeated any word Nicolo asked.

How that first night, after they had come to the agreement not to murder one another in their sleep, Nicolo had woken to find Yusuf’s cloak draped over his shivering frame while his companion had begun his morning prayers.

 _But we can choose what we do. And we should always choose to be kind,_ Anthonia had said, during a life he no longer recognised. Sometimes, when Nicolo looked at the endlessly kind Yusuf, all he could see was the blood he’d drawn from him. And he was ashamed.

This blood was so familiar to him. He imagined he could tell the difference of it’s hot spill across his face, his side, to the bandit’s blood from only moments before. His mind was racing, his body no longer under his command as one hand pressed desperately to Yusuf’s chest and the other gripped the arrow he had just _pulled from Yusuf’s throat._

‘Please wake up, my friend. Please Yusuf.’ He saw his hand moving, touching Yusuf’s neck, his cheek, the rough curve of his beard. He did not remember telling his hand to move. ‘You cannot leave me here alone.’

Yusuf awoke with a violent gasp. Nicolo felt his own heart thump widely. His breath seemed to rush from him, leaving him dizzy.  
‘What happened?’ Yusuf asked, his voice rough from pain, but strong. Nicolo sat back on his feet. He had been on his knees, bending over Yusuf as if in prayer. He could not remember the last time he had prayed.

‘Bandits.’ Nicolo willed his voice to be even, but he didn't think he managed it. He indicated towards the bodies he knew would be there, but didn’t look. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Yusuf. ‘They shot you with an arrow.’ He held up the arrow, still clutching it so hard he thought it might snap. ‘You did not wake up. Not until I pulled out the arrow. I had thought-’ He was babbling now. A sharp pain in his chest cut him off. Nicolo had a sudden vision of himself sitting there, bowed in prayer, as the night passed and the sun rose. Waiting for a breath that would not come. ‘I was wondering if your stubborn refusal to die was just at my hand.’

Nicolo had not meant to say that out loud. He had not meant for the fear he had felt to force itself from his lips. But the way Yusuf looked at him now, the softening of the other man’s eyes, made him feel naked as a babe.

‘Are you well?’ Yusuf reached out, as if to touch him. Nicolo felt the tension in every inch of his skin. Would he know that touch, as he knew the other man’s blood? ‘Did they hurt you?’ Yusuf asked softly, pulling his hand back.

‘This is mostly yours.’ Nicolo said, still feeling the sticky heat across his skin. ‘It sprouted out of you like a fountain when I pulled this out.’ He threw the arrow from his hands then, unable to bear the weight of it any longer. He rubbed a hand across his cheek and felt the smear of blood. He grimaced ‘How bad is it?’

 _‘For you? It’s an improvement.’_ Yusuf said in absolutely perfect zeneize, completely seriously. The adrenaline and fear shimmered out of Nicolo’s blood. He felt almost drunk with relief and he couldn’t help himself.

He laughed.

The next moments were so sudden, so unexpected, Nicolo’s brain took almost a full thirty seconds to catch up to the reality of what was happening. Yusuf was in his lap. Nicolo was painfully trapped with his arse half on his feet and half his pack. Yusuf’s hands bracketed his face. His mind spun. His hands grasped instinctively for a weapon that he knew was out of reach. He wondered if Yusuf would rub his nose to Nicolo’s as Anthonia used to do. He unhelpfully acknowledged that he _did_ know the feeling of Yusuf’s skin just as intimately as his blood. And then he wondered why he was thinking about that at this exact moment.

Yusuf was shushing him, softly, gently. He pressed Nicolo’s hair away from his face with trembling fingers and stared into his eyes as if he could divine Nicolo’s very thoughts. Nicolo wished to blink. Looking at Yusuf’s eyes like this was as if staring into the endless night sky.

 _‘What are you doing?’_ Nicolo wanted to moan at the dismal way the Arabic toppled from his tongue. His mind was writing poetry and his mouth refused to bring the words to fruition. He huffed out a small laugh at his own absurdity.

And with that small sound, Yusuf seemed to find what he was looking for. He smiled and Nicolo re-evaluated his previous reflection. Having the full enormity of Yusuf al-Kaysani’s smile turned upon you, that was as if being blinded by the sun.

Yusuf threw his head back and laughed.

Nicolo’s entire mind seemed to narrow to one point. One bright, flashing moment of understanding. Energy sizzled in his veins and for a moment he felt as he had done at first death, trapped between two worlds. The one that had been, and the one that would be.

 _‘Mio Dio.’_ Nicolo gasped. Yusuf laughed again.

And Nicolo finally knew, in that moment, what it meant to be born from joy, not death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘After my first death, when I did not dream of any laughter for those many months, I worried my death meant my soul was no longer bound to the same man.’ Nicky says slowly, sipping his coffee
> 
> ‘Ha, as if you could get rid of me, _hayati._ ’ Joe leans back in his chair and nudges Nicky with his foot.
> 
> ‘I would never have tried.’ Nicky replies easily. ‘I used to rush to bed after Compline so I could get to sleep, just to hear your laugh. It was the best part of my day.’ Nicky reaches across the table, offering his hand palm up. Joe takes it.
> 
> ‘Okay, come on Nile.’ Andy screws the lid back onto her liquor and shrugs into her jacket. ‘We’re off.’
> 
> ‘Why?’ Nile asks, standing up as Andy pulls her t-shirt and moves her towards the door. Behind her, she hears the sound of a chair scraping across the floor and a low voice.
> 
> ‘And now, _tesoro?_ Is being in bed still your favourite part of the day?’
> 
> Nile speeds up and practically throws herself out the door as Andy laughs.


End file.
